Abstract

This report presents an overview of and summarizes the general conclusions from a UNEP project conducted in Southeast Asia to identify socio-economic impacts of and policy responses to climate change. A series of agricultural crops, river basins, and coastal areas were selected in order to study the biophysical impacts, which were then traced through to the most heavily affected economic activities and social groups. Policy exercises were conducted in Malaysia and Indonesia to present the results to senior policy makers responsible for strategic planning in relevant government agencies and to engage them in formulating possible response strategies.

The policy exercises linked the potential regional impacts of climate change to long-term and complex social and economic problems, to ongoing and planned large-scale development programs, and to long-term objectives for overall socio-economic development. These linkages provided a series of "no-regret" adaptation strategies that would provide generally agreed social, economic, and environmental benefits even if current predictions of climate change and regional impacts turned out to be highly overestimated.